We need to be careful when we start singling out only one group of people based on their genetic code and demanding that they “respect” another entire group of people. The reasoning is quite simple: it’s mindlessly discriminatory. It also has the potential to turn into a condescending shamefest.
- Not everyone in one group needs to be taught to respect others because they already do.
- If we single out only one group to respect other groups, no one is teaching the others to respect that group.
- Not every individual in any birthgroup is entitled to respect.
Of course, no one should disrespect someone based solely upon their being men, or women, or white, or black, and so forth. But teaching such values doesn’t mean we have to single out any of those groups, either.
Which is exactly what is being advocated in the UK. From The Daily Mail:
Teenage boys are learning about relationships through internet pornography and need to be taught about how to respect women through compulsory sex education lessons in schools, campaigners have warned.
So…only boys need to be taught to respect others?
Boys are developing worrying sexual behaviours as a result of watching internet pornography, which is often sexually aggressive and easy to access, it has been claimed.
The group, which includes experts from online parenting forum Mumsnet, has said education in schools could also help girls learn how to protect themselves from abuse and harassment.
Apparently boys do not need to learn how to protect themselves from abuse and harassment. Or if they do, that need is invisible to these campaigners.
Mumsnet is a parenting organization with a significant Feminist slant, by the way.
In a letter to The Times today, the group said that one in three girls is groped or experiences unwanted advances at school.
This statistic is useless at best and dishonest at worst. How many of those “1 in 3″ are groped, as opposed to simply receiving “unwanted advances” (asked out by an unpopular guy)? One? Two? 0.00001?
For all we know, if 9,999 girls get asked out on a date by a guy they don’t like and only one gets groped, these people would say “10,000 girls experience unwanted advances or are groped.”
It’s a classic fearmongering tactic among Feminists:
- Conflate two types of undesirable behavior, one of which is far more undesirable but also much, much rarer.
- Assign those behaviors only to men, or only refer to women as victims.
We see more fearmongering tactics here:
Officials teaching literature for sex education lessons were last updated in 2000, and contain no mention of the internet.
‘In an age of one-click-away violent and degrading pornography online that is becoming the default sex education for some young people, this is woefully inadequate,’ the letter says.
I’m all for making education relevant to the modern age. But there are some problems here. First, violent pornography is not the “default” type of porn, let alone the default type of sex education. Second, a lot of violent porn involves violent women.
Just as these campaigners seem to assume men are never abused, apparently they also live in a fantasy world where women are never violent. I don’t see any reason to encourage those in the UK to throw their hard-earned tax dollars toward a condescending male-shaming campaign.
In September Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg warned sex education should include lessons in the ‘menacing’ impact on young girls.
Translation: teach young girls to distrust, fear, and resent boys.
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner has warned that easy access to online pornography encourages teenage boys to see girls as sex objects and to engage in risky sexual behaviour.
Do women never engage in risky sexual behavior? Do they never say “don’t worry, I’m on the pill” when they are not? Do they never drink while intoxicated? Do women never deliberately manufacture themselves into sex objects to exploit the world around them? Do they never use beauty to manipulate others or ahead?
Here’s a new idea: we are all responsible for the culture in which we live. Both sexes feel pressure to act certain ways, but many in either sex have also made the choice to act in those ways when it has benefited them.
In a major report it lifted the lid on the corrosive effect of hardcore porn on children, concluding that those who access adult images and videos are more likely to lose their virginity at a younger age.
There were even indications that boys who look at violent porn are more likely to become sexually aggressive.
I’d like to see these “indications,” because almost all the credible studies out there demonstrate that rape has declined as porn consumption has increased. Indeed, it has actually made men less sexually aggressive and adventurous when it comes to real, live women. Feminist Naomi Wolf herself wrote an article about this.
The study called for urgent action by ministers, schools and parents to ‘develop children’s resilience to pornography’ after finding that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images.
If children are viewing pornography at home, especially violent pornography, that is the fault the parents (or whoever is taking care of the children).
In September Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg warned sex education should include lessons in the ‘menacing’ impact on young girls, but revealed his call for guidance to teachers to be updated for the digital age was being blocked by Education Secretary Michael Gove.
Yes: unlike what we would see in the United States, the secretary of education in the UK has the courage to question the dogma of Feminism. Well done, Mr. Grove.
In response, Mr Gove insisted he takes the ‘whole question of sex education very seriously’.
Speaking at a Policy Exchange event, he added: ‘We conducted a review recently of personal, social, health and economic education and one of the conclusions we drew from that is that the right thing to do it to trust teachers.
Did you see that? A politician said that we should trust teachers more than lofty and disconnected government officials. When’s the last time you heard a politician say that in the U.S.?
Seeing the other side, and a brief digression
On a basic, conceptual level there is something missing from the minds of these campaigners. Are women never taught to objectify men by our culture? Are men and boys never under pressure to act a certain way to please women? Shouldn’t we be including the distinctive experiences of men and boys and trying to understand them?
The reality, of course, is that women are taught through all sorts of cultural influences to regard men as their providers, and to use their beauty to attract men in order to gain access through their resources. While some men may do this, it tends to be far rarer among them.
Here’s what Disney teaches young men about how to attract women. Try to find the common denominator:
Yes, men: if you ever want to attract a quality woman, you have to be rich. Preferably a good-looking man with smooth moves, but at the end of the day rich really is where it’s at.
Some may say these phenomena are simply symptoms of evolutionary psychology: the philosophy that much of human behavior is influenced by millennia of humans selectively deciding with whom they will reproduce, with the overall purpose being the survival of the tribe, nation, or species.
Thus men would have more of a natural tendency to desire women who are physically beautiful because such a metric is a good index of fertility. Women, by contrast, would have a greater natural tendency to desire men who are able to provide for them when they are vulnerable during pregnancy.
If we’re going to behave as though men’s “base desires” are crude and unrefined,we shouldn’t pretend that women don’t have them as well, or that their own are somehow morally superior.
Editor’s note: this item originally appeared on A Voice for Male Students. –DE
